By Don Thompson | KFF Health News
Disability rights advocates sued Tuesday to overturn California’s physician-assisted death law, arguing that recent changes make it too easy for people with terminal diseases whose deaths aren’t imminent to kill themselves with drugs prescribed by a doctor.
California’s original law allowing terminally ill adults to obtain prescriptions for life-ending drugs was passed in 2016. Advocates say the revised version that took effect last year removes crucial safeguards and violates the U.S. Constitution and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles County, argue that life-ending drugs are more likely to be used by people with disabilities and racial and ethnic minorities because those groups are less likely to receive proper medical and mental health care. The advocates fear that vulnerable people could be pressured into taking their lives by family members or caretakers or feel pressure themselves because they don’t want to be a burden.
The lawsuit contends that California’s approach, known as the End of Life Option Act, harks back to the discredited practice of eugenics, which once sought to keep people with disabilities and other minority groups from reproducing.
The system “steers people with terminal disabilities away from necessary mental health care, medical care, and disability supports, and towards death by suicide under the guise of ‘mercy’ and ‘dignity’ in dying,” the suit argues. The terminal disease required for assistance is, by definition, a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, it says.
The law violates constitutional equal protection and due process safeguards designed to protect people from discrimination and exclusion, said Michael Bien, one of the attorneys who sued on behalf of the United Spinal Association, which has at least 60,000 members with spinal cord injuries or who use wheelchairs, including 5,000 in…
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